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Operator Assistance
Operator assistance refers to a telephone call in which the calling party requires an operator to provide some form of assistance in completing the call. This may include telephone calls made from pay phones, calls placed station-to-station, person-to-person, collect, third number calls, calls billed to a credit card, and certain international calls which cannot be dialed directly. The telephone operator may also be able to assist with determining what kind of technical difficulties are occurring on a phone line, to verify whether a line is busy (Busy Line Verification, or BLV), or left off the hook, and break in on a phone line to request for the caller to clear the line for an incoming call ( Busy Line Interruption, or BLI). The latter service is often utilized by emergency police. In addition, operators are often a first point of contact for the elderly wanting information on the current date and time. Before the advent of emergency telephone numbers, operators identifie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telephone Call
A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network A telephone network is a telecommunications network that connects telephones, which allows telephone calls between two or more parties, as well as newer features such as fax and internet. The idea was revolutionized in the 1920s, as more and more ... between the called party and the calling party. First telephone call The first telephone call was made on March 10, 1876, by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell demonstrated his ability to "talk with electricity" by transmitting a call to his assistant, Thomas Watson. The first words transmitted were "Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you." This event has been called Bell's "greatest success", as it demonstrated the first successful use of the telephone. Although it was his greatest success, he refused to have a telephone in his own home because it was something he invented by mistake and saw it as a distraction from his main studies. Information transmission A telephone cal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Directory Assistance
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity. Technology Directory assistance systems incorporate a wide range of automation to reduce the cost of human operators. Almost all systems use custom database software to locate listings quickly. Most directory assistance systems use automated readback systems to give out the phone number. This frees the directory assistance operator to move on to another caller as soon as the correct listing is located. Some systems have "store and forward" technology which records "city and state" the caller is requesting and then plays the city and state speech to the operator before they come online and then say "Residential or business listing?" or simply "What listing please?" Interactive voice response systems have been added to many directory assistance systems. These complex systems use speech reco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North American Numbering Plan
The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the international calling code ''1''. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate in the NANP. The NANP was originally devised in the 1940s by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) for the Bell System and the independent telephone operators in North America. The goal was to unify the diverse local numbering plans that had been established in the preceding decades and prepare the continent for direct-dialing of calls by customers without the involvement of telephone operators. AT&T continued to administer the numbering plan until the breakup of the Bell System, when administration was delegated to the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA), a service that has been procured from the private sector by the Fede ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conference Call
A conference call is a telephone call in which someone talks to several people at the same time. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call or set up so that the called party merely listens into the call and cannot speak. It is sometimes called ATC (audio teleconference). Conference calls can be designed so that the calling party calls the other participants and adds them to the call; however, participants are usually able to call into the conference call themselves by dialing a telephone number that connects to a "conference bridge," which is a specialized type of equipment that links telephone lines. Companies commonly use a specialized service provider who maintains the conference bridge, or who provides the phone numbers and PIN codes that participants dial to access the meeting or conference call. These service providers can often dial-out to participants, connecting them to call and introducing them to the parties who are o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cell Phones
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and, therefore, mobile telephones are called ''cellular telephones'' or ''cell phones'' in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones ( 2G) support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messagIng, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, video games and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only those capabilities are known as fea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long Distance Telephone Call
In telecommunications, a long-distance call (U.S.) or trunk call (also known as a toll call in the U.K. ) is a telephone call made to a location outside a defined local calling area. Long-distance calls are typically charged a higher billing rate than local calls. The term is not necessarily synonymous with placing calls to another telephone area code. Long-distance calls are classified into two categories: national or domestic calls which connect two points within the same country, and international calls which connect two points in different countries. Within the United States there is a further division into long-distance calls within a single state (intrastate) and interstate calls, which are subject to different regulations (counter-intuitively, calls within states are usually more expensive than interstate calls). Not all interstate calls are long-distance calls. Since 1984 there has also been a distinction between intra-local access and transport area (LATA) calls and thos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bell System
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundred years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada. At the time of the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, it had assets of $150 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) and employed over one million people. Ever since the 1910s, American antitrust regulators had been observing and accusing the Bell System of abusing its monopoly power, and had brought legal action multiple times over the decades, until in 1974 the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Direct Distance Dialing
Direct distance dialing (DDD) is a telecommunication service feature in North America by which a caller may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. Direct dialing by subscribers typically requires extra digits to be dialed as prefixes to the directory telephone number of the destination. International Direct Distance Dialing (IDDD) extends the system beyond the geographic boundaries of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). History The first direct-dialed long-distance telephone calls were possible in the New Jersey communities of Englewood and Teaneck. Customers of the ENglewood 3, ENglewood 4 and TEaneck 7 exchanges, who could already dial telephone numbers in the New York City area, could place calls to eleven major cities across the United States by dialing the three-digit area code and the seven-digit directory number. Local telephone numbers still consisted of the first two letters of the central office name and five digits. On ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emergency Service
Emergency services and rescue services are organizations that ensure public safety and health by addressing and resolving different emergencies. Some of these agencies exist solely for addressing certain types of emergencies, while others deal with ad hoc emergencies as part of their normal responsibilities. Many of these agencies engage in community awareness and prevention programs to help the public avoid, detect, and report emergencies effectively. Emergency services are often considered first responders. Emergency services have one or more dedicated emergency telephone numbers reserved for critical emergency calls. In many countries, one number is used for all of the emergency services (e.g. 911 in the Americas, 999 in the United Kingdom, 112 in continental Europe Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calling Party
The calling party (in some contexts called the "A-Number") is a person who (or device that) initiates a telephone call. The person who, or device that, receives a telephone call is the called party (or callee or B-party). In some countries, it is common etiquette for a call originator to identify himself first instead of the receiver, when the connection is established. Modems and fax machine Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...s use different tones when originating or answering a connection, which may be a source of problems for the user. Telephony Teletraffic {{telephony-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emergency Telephone Number
Most public switched telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number (sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or the emergency services number) that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assistance. The emergency number differs from country to country; it is typically a three-digit number so that it can be easily remembered and dialed quickly. Some countries have a different emergency number for each of the different emergency services; these often differ only by the last digit. In many countries, dialing either 1-1-2 (used in Europe and parts of Asia) or 9-1-1 (used in the Americas) will connect callers to emergency services. For individual countries, see the list of emergency telephone numbers. Configuration and operation The emergency telephone number is a special case in the country's telephone number plan. In the past, calls to the emergency telephone number were often routed over special dedicated circuits. Though with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Busy Line Interrupt
Busy line interrupt, also known as emergency breakthrough, is a function on land line A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which us ... telephones that allows a caller to interrupt a phone conversation of another caller, especially one who does not have call waiting. It can usually only be initiated by request to the telephone operator. Much like long distance calling before the late 1990s, busy line interrupt is a service provided, for instance, to allow people to contact a family member in the event of an emergency if the receiving party's line is busy and the news cannot wait. The service is not free and is charged whether or not the calling party can reach the person on the other end (as the phone just might be off the hook for privacy reasons or the line might be connected t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
